“You know what?  We sell HVAC parts.  IT is not our business.” said a prospective client recently.  “There’s got to be a better way! I lie awake at night concerned about myriad “gotchas” in my present IT environment, such as,

Security – Without proper barriers, confidential corporate and customer information is vulnerable to infiltration.

Disaster Recovery – No real back-up system means any lost data was lost for good or too expensive to recover.

Stand Alone PCs – Computers, and therefore staff, have difficulty sharing and streamlining information.

Protection – Regular cleaning and attention is required to address issues related to inadequate virus protection.

Limitations – Without the proper tools, management is unable to take advantage of business intelligence that could differentiate my company in the marketplace.

Application Hosting – Trying to manage an internal server means time and focus away from the business itself.”

“Joe” is now a client and couldn’t be more pleased with the solutions we put in place.  And he is now sleeping better.  Drop me a line if you want to hear more on this case, or others.

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix. He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

Just received this from our friends at Evolve IP:

Research firm Gartner Inc. predicts virtual desktop revenue will hit $65.7 billion as adoption reaches 49 million units by 2013. That’s just around the corner, and even though many channel partners are caught up in the cloud computing craze, they may be missing out on the virtual desktop opportunity. That’s because virtual desktop technology, while simple to grasp, is difficult to deploy. From hardware and software to networks and data centers, there are so many moving parts that it would be understandable if most VARs and agents said, “Thanks, I’ll pass.” But don’t write off virtual desktop sales altogether. Instead, consider the technology’s benefits and the industry’s available resources. The key is to make the process easy on you.

The case for virtual desktop is straightforward. If a company employs dozens of remote and traveling workers, or if many of its employees use laptops, it makes sense to store the operating system and applications such as Microsoft Office in the cloud. The programs don’t run locally on the desktop (or laptop, thin client or mobile device) and that has several implications:

• First, because the applications are housed in a data center, a business’s IT staff controls what employees may and may not access; security is tight.
• Second, if a fire or flood, for instance, hurts the company, operations will continue as normal (for employees not located in the affected facility, anyway).
• Third, if an employee loses a laptop, there’s no confidential information on the device — all of the data is in the cloud and can only be accessed by authorized users. The company just has to replace the computer.
• Fourth, virtual desktops cut costs. In a January 2011 report for DataCore Software Corp., analysts noted that virtual desktops lowered total hardware expenses to about $32 per desktop, rather than costing hundreds of dollars in a non-virtual environment. Similarly, research firm IDC found virtual desktops reduce hardware and operating expenses by up to 50 percent, and energy bills by up to 80 percent.

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix. He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

Let’s face it, all companies struggle with how to best manage the collaborative process as it pertains to creating and maintaining documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.  Microsoft’s SharePoint is quickly becoming the standard toolset to enable the secure sharing and management of these critical corporate assets.  Best of all, the cost of SharePoint is finally at a level all firms can justify AND afford.

You and your team, division and company can securely be productive, brainstorm, create and empower starting at about $30 a month.  Yep, reputable hosting firms like Matrix can now offer unlimited user secure logon access to a SharePoint site for about a buck a day and have you up an running inside of a week.

Drop me a note or give me a call for more information.

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix. He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

I arrived Sunday afternoon to Boston’s Logan airport to join the TUG gathering at the local Hilton made up of 2 special interest groups (“SIGs”) for 2 days of discussions, presentations and simple conversations about the use and application of Infor’s A+ and SHIMS ERP software within the distribution model.

Monday morning kicked off with brief presentations from each of about a dozen sponsors.  In addition to Matrix, several sponsors of note included SDSI, MaxRecall, Unilink, Avalara and EpaCube. Here’s an excerpt of my presentation to convince the groups that choosing Matrix as their cloud services partner is a good idea:

Matrix is headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina with data centers in Columbia and Milwaukee. We are a member of The Climatic Group, a $100 million a year collection of companies with about 140 employees in locations throughout the Southeast. Matrix has been focused on delivering cloud services since 2001.

We own and manage our data center in Columbia, which is built on IBM, Dell and Cisco hardware. Our Milwaukee operation is similarly outfitted and is collocated in a Cogent data center facility in the downtown area.
We have clients and client users coast to coast, giving us a national footprint.

On to this thing called “Cloud Computing”: Let’s say it’s the mid 1990s. Advisers are telling you you’ve got to get on this thing called the Internet. You need a website, to be able to send and receive files and to get messages, called “email”. Looking back, would you say those advisors were right? In fact, the Internet powered a fundamental shift to how businesses operate.

In fact, just yesterday 2 billion videos were watched on YouTube. 293 billion emails were sent. And the average teen sends almost 4000 texts per month. Do you think the “Digital Natives” of our population get the cloud value proposition? These are provocative stats that point to real, measurable opportunities and challenges!

Right now, another major transformation is taking place. It’s going to change the way everyone in this room does business. It probably already has for many of you! It’s called cloud computing, and you must know about it if you want to stay competitive. It’s going to give you far more power with fewer headaches and at less cost. For this discussion, I’m calling any information delivery via the Internet cloud computing.

As business owners and managers, you know your specific pain points. Most of them add cost to the bottom line. Some of them keep you up at night.

Cloud computing is such an important toolset for growing companies to address these pain points that over 80% of software development firms have plans to put their products in the cloud within the next 18 months, including Infor!

Here’s how Matrix and other cloud computing services firms are changing the world. Now I know the most, if not all, of you understand the cloud value proposition, so bear with me for a few seconds.

Let’s say you now have your ERP application and all or many of the necessary ancillary applications running on servers that require floor space, power, cooling, regular maintenance, upgrades, etc. And, you had to buy servers big enough to handle the scale you thought your business MIGHT achieve over the life span of the hardware – 3 to 5 years.

Since Matrix supplies ALL of the servers, operating system licensing and related infrastructure and the only thing our clients need to purchase are workstations, laptops, thin clients, all these problems basically disappear. We deliver a virtual desktop with all of your applications and data via the Internet for access by a web browser on your tablet, Mac, PC, thin client, etc. Add employees? We scale the system quickly to handle the additional load. Your needs change? Just reduce the number of subscriptions.

So why haven’t all of you adopted cloud solutions? Easy, the cloud computing industry is a messy place right now, and will probably remain messy for some time to come. It’s challenging to know which cloud services providers to trust and how to get cloud-based services to work with on-premise software or other cloud-based services.

Matrix recognizes these barriers and has made a business decision to focus on the distribution model and ERP software application delivery. Central to our strategy is to understand the components critical to firms like yours. These critical components have been and continue to be a key part of the vetting process we apply to all of the systems and technologies we employ to deliver the cloud computing experience to your users. The result? Your users enjoy a more reliable and secure computing experience that most closely matches what they’re used to.

Let’s take a look at a few examples:

Company “A” has 80+ users who rely on FACTS ERP application to sell widgets from their 10 branch locations. Their pain? Performance and reliability. By putting FACTS in the cloud, Matrix was able to save “A” at least 100 man days by eliminating several single points of failure AND general system slowness.

Company “G” made a conscious decision to move their SX.e system into the Matrix cloud to reduce direct costs while at the same time creating ahighly scalable environment in preparation for the restart of the building industry in Texas.

And last, company “L” was courting several large “Fortune 1000″ clients who were reluctant to do business with them. The prospective clients saw significant procedural, security and systemic weaknesses associated with L’s housing of their server farm in the breakroom of their facility in a hurricane-prone area. By placing their FACTS system in our data centers they addressed all of the perceived issues and them some.

We have 22 instances of Storefront running for A+, SX.e and FACTS customers from North Dakota to New England to Alabama. This is the simplest proof that the cloud represents enhanced security and greater reliability at a lower total cost.

In closing, cloud computing is here to stay. When you’re ready to consider a cloud-based service why not talk to a provider who is a long time member of TUG and understands the distribution model. Please consider Matrix.

Overall attention to the cloud model, and Matrix specifically, was very good.  I had a great number of folks ask me about our various services with a lot of commentary about their intentions to move some or all of their environments to the cloud.  Of those, 5 are considering doing something by the end of the year.  I will be working through discovery sessions with them over the next couple weeks.

Finally, I was also able to catch up with Phil Maehr and Dennis Turano of MCS, our partner in the Northeast.  Infor reseller Aktion Associates also showed interest in partnering with Matrix in order to bring their clients a cloud alternative.  Long time customer Bob Brown of Two’s Company also attended.  Chatting with Bob is always fun and provocative. 

Thanks to Gary and Karen Brown of Conferences By Design, and their very able crew for putting on this productive event!

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix. He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

Yes, The Cloud has an excellent option to traditional on-premises phone systems for your business.  I’m not talking about Skype or similar services here.  This is a video for a service by Alteva Communications that will knock your socks off!

Click here to view the video!

Drop me a line if you’d like more information.

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix. He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

Following are some musings about my week in Chicago, while I ponder the possible impact to my travel plans by hurricane Irene.  Monday and Tuesday were spent in a “UC” training class presented by Alteva Communications of Philadelphia.  UC, or Unified Communications, is quickly becoming a focal point of the Cloud phenomenon due to its integration and blended presentation of voice, email, data files, tasks, etc.  I think Alteva has the most convincing story with respect to their UC model, their infrastructure behind it and the people selling and supporting it. 

My fellow trainees represented sales organizations from New York, Massachusetts, California and Pennsylvania.  All are convinced that we are entering a formative time for the cloud services model.  One, Louis Hayner of Alteva, stated that the time is now for succeeding with the cloud value proposition – security, reliability and scalability.

The ChannelPartners Event gave me the opportunity to participate in a number of educational sessions, including understanding and applying TCO (total cost of ownership) analysis to the cloud model.  Specifically, educating the consumer on the “real costs” of doing business as usual (on prem) verses in The Cloud.  While I didn’t hear anything new, I did take away some very interesting insights into getting the message across to the prospective client.

I also participated in a session about agent compensation.  I took away some good information about contracts, renewals and commission levels.  As importantly, a great deal of agent psychology was shared with the group regarding how to consistently motivate them to sell my products.

Finally, the show gave me the opportunity to forge existing partner relationships with Mike and Tom McCrossin of BCN Solutions Express out of New City, New York and Matt Foster of CarolinaTel of Greenville, South Carolina.  New partner discussions were also prevalent, including Dan Baldwin of Orange County, CA, Mordie Weintraub of Boston, Tom Dalloo of Detroit and Bill Sowers of New York.

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix. He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

Hi All,

I hope your summer has been safe, fun and productive so far. We here at Matrix have enjoyed a surprisingly busy summer working on a wide array of internal projects, including upgrading our virtual server environments, enhancing our data backup and storage systems and adding key staff to project management and ticket dispatching duties, among others.

Provisioning new services for existing and new clients has kept the pace extremely brisk. Long time client Ellett Brothers, a national wholesaler of sporting goods, has enjoyed meteoric growth lately. eSecuritel, an international mobile device insurance firm has seen a similar growth pace. We have enjoyed an abundance of new business from both firms.

New clients have been prevalent as well, including Gypsum Supply of Dallas, Texas, Louis Wohl Company of Tampa, Florida and Ace Supply of Minneapolis. It is exciting to have this kind of industry and locational diversity. These firms also confirm what I’ve long been preaching: Cloud services represent a value proposition for most business types and sizes.

In closing, we will soon be publishing some recent success stories in order to display the various and creative ways cloud services can help firms be more productive, cut costs, become more secure and address compliance requirements. Please drop me a line if you have thoughts or ideas on this topic.

Best,

Tom

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix. He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

Click here for link to article…

Microsoft Windows Thin PC (WinTPC) enables customers to repurpose existing PCs as thin clients by providing a smaller footprint, locked down version of Windows 7. This provides organizations with significant benefits: More…

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix. He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

I came across this “white paper” recently that does an outstanding job of underscoring the value proposition here at Matrix.  Take a look…

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix. He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com